They've got a start: Their Baby Bubbler, an inexpensive and portable device to help babies with underdeveloped or weakened lungs breathe naturally, soon may be used in hospitals and clinics across the developing world.

Students took several prototypes to Rwanda last spring to explore the device's commercial potential, and a Rice professor and a Texas Children's Hospital pediatrician will leave for Malawi and Lesotho later this month with more in tow for clinical tests.

“It's just really nice knowing that what we've been working on, someone can actually benefit from it,” said Joseph Chang, who graduated from Rice last month and will start medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, this fall.

The project began in September as a final project for bioengineering students.

The result is packed into a clear plastic container about the size of a shoe box and weighs less than 10 pounds.

“We saw a huge need for it,” said Jocelyn Brown, a team member who will continue with the project for Beyond Traditional Borders, a collaboration between Rice and several Texas Medical Center institutions focused on global health problems.

Heather Machen, an emergency room doctor at Texas Children's Hospital, and Maria Oden, a Rice engineering professor who oversees the student projects, returned from Africa last summer convinced of the need for a low-cost solution to help babies with breathing problems.

Not a ventilator

According to the World Health Organization, respiratory infections cause about 20 percent of deaths of children under age 5.

Hospitals in the United States and other developed nations use high-tech, expensive equipment, but that isn't realistic for much of the developing world, Machen said.

“A lot of the places we're looking at, it's not an option to use a ventilator, or there are only one or two in the hospital,” she said.

The Baby Bubbler isn't a ventilator and would help only children able to breathe on their own. That includes premature infants with underdeveloped lungs and those with pneumonia, bronchitis and other respiratory infections.

It works by sending a continuous flow of pressurized air into the lungs, similar to the machines used by adults with sleep apnea.

Untested for now

Machen served as an adviser, and members of the hospital's biotechnology department, respiratory therapists and neonatologist Steven Abrams gave advice, too.

Tests show that the Baby Bubbler provides pressurized airflow, but Oden said it hasn't been used in patients. That may happen this summer, when she and Machen hope to set up an evaluation through a hospital in Blantyre, Malawi.

Any tests would have to meet guidelines for clinical trials required by that hospital, as well as Rice and Texas Children's, she said.

But the Baby Bubbler already has passed a major hurdle.

“Not every group ends up with a project that actually works,” Oden said.

Business venture

It has another thing going for it, too: A group of Rice business students has created a business plan, and Oden said there has been early interest from potential investors.

No price has been set, although Brown said talks with health care workers and government officials in Rwanda last spring convinced her that $350 is probably the upper limit. The prototypes cost about $140 to produce, according to Rice.

Brown traveled to Rwanda with the business team, which also entered its plan in the Rice Business Plan Competition last spring.

Members won the $10,000 top prize in the social venture category; their total winnings came to $11,750.

They haven't decided how to use their winnings, but Brown said she will continue to pursue it now that she is out of school and working for Beyond Traditional Borders.